chapter 4
The heart, the brain, the blood and the pneuma:
Hippocrates, Diocles and Aristotle on the
location of cognitive processes
1 the debate in antiquity on the location
of the mind: origin, development
and misrepresentation
In one of the first chapters of his systematic account of the treatment of
acute and chronic diseases, the Latin medical author Caelius Aurelianus
(fifth centuryce) discussesphrenitis, a psychosomatic disorder with symp-
toms including acute fever, mental confusion, a weak and fast pulse and
various forms of abnormal behaviour such as the picking of threads out of
clothing.^1 Caelius Aurelianus, himself belonging to the medical school
called the Methodists,^2 begins his argument, as usual, with a survey of
the views on the nature and origin of this disease held by doctors belonging
to other schools of thought, in particular their views on the question of
which part of the body is affected by the disease. His main reason for doing
so is to show the contrast between his own and only correct treatment of
the disease and the general confusion among other doctors:
What part [of the body] is affected in phrenitis? This question has been raised
particularly by leaders of other sects so that they may apply their treatments ac-
cording to the different parts affected and prepare local remedies for the places
in question... Now some say that the brain is affected, others its fundus or base,
which we may translatesessio[‘seat’], others its membranes, others both the brain
and its membranes, others the heart, others the apex of the heart, others the mem-
brane which incloses the heart, others the artery which the Greeks callaorte, others
the thick vein (Greekphleps pacheia), others the diaphragm. But why continue
in this way when we can easily clarify the matter by stating what these writers
really had in mind? For in every case they hold that the part affected in phrenitis
This chapter was first published in Dutch inGewina 18 ( 1995 ) 214 – 29.
(^1) For the problem of identifying ‘phrenitis’ see Potter ( 1980 ) 110 ; Pigeaud ( 1981 a) 72.
(^2) For an outline of the Methodists’ medical views see Edelstein ( 1967 b); Pigeaud ( 1991 ); Gourevitch
( 1991 ); Pigeaud ( 1993 ) 565 – 99. The epistemological principles of the Methodists are discussed by
Frede ( 1983 ) and by Lloyd ( 1983 ) 182 – 200. [On Caelius’ version of Methodism see also ch. 11 below.]
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